Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday praised North Texas first responders for preventing loss of life during Tuesday’s tornado outbreak and indicated he was prepared to request federal disaster relief. [Dallas Star-Telegram]

Six months after the expiration of a renewable-energy federal loan guarantee program that backed $16 billion in loans to solar, wind and geothermal energy projects, the Energy Department has decided to offer a smaller set of similar guarantees by tapping another pot of money appropriated by Congress last year. [New York Times]

A Mississippi man pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges he instructed a crew he was supervising on a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico to falsify information regarding the testing of a blowout preventer. [NOLA.com]

California is one of only nine states that have developed comprehensive strategies and implemented policies to deal with water shortages, droughts, a shrinking snowpack and other water-related problems that are expected to occur as global temperatures increase this century as predicted by scientists, a Natural Resources Defense Council report said. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives want federal regulators to take a close look at a recent Colorado study of the practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” [Glenwood Springs Post Independent]

Eleven environmental organizations are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force it to better regulate toxic coal ash and citing recent groundwater contamination at 29 coal ash dump sites in 16 states, including two in Western Pennsylvania. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]